


Get Off My Lawn!

by tck_writes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 04:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tck_writes/pseuds/tck_writes
Summary: Prompt: Steve Rogers, "Get off my lawn!".A series of one-shots, 1200 words or less, loosely connected by the same prompt.





	1. 2014 - Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrippingOnStairs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrippingOnStairs/gifts).



> Takes place during Winter Soldier.  
> Tracks Steve and Natasha after their discovery of Shield's original base.

The remainder of the building from the missile caused explosion hits them like a tidal wave, and he’s never been so happy for his shield.

_“Vibranium,”_ he remembers Howard saying when he’d first picked it up, unaware of its future significance, _“Stronger than steel, and a third of the weight. It’s completely vibration absorbant.”_

_“How come it’s not standard issue?”_

_“That’s the rarest metal on Earth. What you’re holding there - it’s all we’ve got.”_

“Natasha,” he whispers, when he stops feeling additional weight pile against the shield on his arm. He calls her name a second time, but still garners no response - the area around them is pitch black, but he can feel her breath light against his shoulder, so for now, he’ll assume unconsciousness, and move onto clearing the rubble enough to escape.

The main piece blocking him falls away after about a dozen hits with his shield, and he is greeted with an inferno in the path above him, bits of fire interspersed between gigantic shards of rock. The destruction - especially of _this_ place, and to think he once lived and breathed on the ground above it, met _Peggy_ here - the destruction of it sickens him, even more so given the betrayal it was apart of - and to think, _he_ was supposed to end it, die _with_ the last head of Hydra. 

The red light also illuminates his compatriot, utterly limp and still, proving his previous assumption correct. His ears pick up something whirring in the distance, and he scoops her up in a fireman carry - they _can’t_ afford to waste any time.

The flashing lights of hovercrafts as he navigates their way out is evidence enough, and he ducks and dodges between anything available until the boundary of the base has been cleared. He debates going back for the car, but figures given Fury’s apparent cause of injuries, as well as the missile, the Hydra agents will long since found it, and decides against it.

With Natasha still unconscious and the two of them making the top of S.H.E.I.L.D.’s most wanted list, he knows they’ll need to be out of Wheaton before the next hour, out of New Jersey before dawn, and more than that - they need help. With all S.H.I.E.L.D personnel assumed Hydra, at least for the moment, the list is rather regrettably short. Barton has been MIA since the chitauri and New York, Banner is out of country, Thor is presumably on Asgard, and Fury is _dead_. All that’s left is Tony and Pepper, and New York is by far the closest, but it’s also by far the most obvious place to go as well. And _nothing_ screams “look at me” like Stark Tower - the Hydra agents will be on their tail within minutes, and probably take Tony too… he _can’t_ in good conscience drag Tony and Pepper down with them, not when there’s still a chance they can remain uninvolved.

If New York is the _most_ likely place for them to go, then he supposes Natasha will want to circle back to the _last_ place they should want to be. 

Washington D.C., and borrowing the first car he finds it is. 

And he’ll rack his brains for anyone left he can trust along the way.

 

\---

 

His partner in crime wakes up just as they’re crossing over the Potomac, nearing five in the morning according to the dashboard of their current stolen vehicle.

He puts the breaks on the car when he catches sight of a familiar church, Natasha following him as he gets out.

“Your fossil friend?” she asks, except her voice is inexplicably hoarse and devoid of humor. He steals a quick look at her, standing rigid like the dawning sunlight will burn her, gives a quick nod, starts walking, figures she’ll follow.

She does, albeit almost hesitantly. (Shell-shock, he figures, as she fails to start her usual banter. Shell-shock, and it’s bad, but he thinks he’ll be better off trying to wait until later to draw her out.)

The building is empty, and all it takes is rifling through a few drawers before he has the address.

_Sam Wilson._

And God, his luck better not fail him again now.

 

\--

 

Standing in front of the door after walking up the back lawn, is terrifying.

Natasha looks like a ghost, has all the way through their trek through town, following in his footsteps as if she were lost and he was her guide home. She looks too pale now, too, standing half a step behind him, swaying with the push of the wind like she’s nothing more than featherweight, eyes flitting back and forth from space to space.

Steve’s had doors slammed in his face before, had, “Get off my lawn!” followed by obscenities screamed at his retreating back, slept with nothing but the stars at his back, woken up to rain pelting down on him. 

He’s terrified Sam will do the same, terrified he’ll be left on the run with a barely conscious assassin to take care of, alone. Terrified the world will burn a smolder like it almost did last time, terrified Hydra will succeed in its rise from the ashes. Terrified that this time, he won’t be enough. (Because after all, Captain America has always had his friends to help him.)

It’s almost anticlimactic, in the end. The blinds being pulled up, the door sliding open. Sam’s confused greeting.

They must look like hell, still covered in soot and ash.

“I’m sorry about this,” he starts, because he _is_ , and if more desperation sinks through his tone than he means too, well, Steve’s _nothing_ if not desperate. “We need a place to lay low.”

Natasha joins in, voice slightly closer to normal. Humor is still absent in her tone, but given the statement is true… “Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”

Sam takes a step back to let them pass through, and maybe Steve’s shoulders fall an inch in relief. 

“Not everyone.”


	2. 2014 - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the months after Winter Soldier.  
> Detailing a road trip, lots of calls on burner phones, and a possible explanation for Captain America's many cameos around Peter Parker's high school.

After, once he stumbles out into the middle of the street, once Nick Fury convinces Steve he’s not trying to kill him, once he thinks about his options, realizes he doesn’t exactly have any, joins SHIELD - they set him up with an email account. _stevenr@gmail.com_.

It’s unconnected to SHIELD, which will make Natasha laugh - a full body laugh, amused and only half-mocking - when he tells her about it once she explains _what_ , exactly, an email address is in the first place: (“Think instant letters,” -- and then -- “We’re national intelligence, Rogers. If there were SHIELD standard email addresses, they’d get hacked so much we’d be useless.”)

Nonetheless, it means, half a year later, when she leaks all of SHIELD onto the Internet, the email address will stay his. 

His flat location is leaked, and everyone knows what he looks like anyway, so Steve, once he discharges himself from the hospital (against medical advice, quarter past midnight), will use Sam to electronically end his lease, will go out in a rotating round of disguises - black hair, brown beard, round glasses, back hunched, scrappy clothes - as they traverse through the North American continent to try to find Bucky. (No luck).

They both agree, four weeks in, coming out of Alaska, if Bucky’s even still alive (and he has to be, Steve is sure) that it makes more sense than not for the Winter Soldier to have escaped to Europe, rather than remain in a country he’s frequented only rarely since he was turned.

But Natasha and Hill - not to mention Tony and Pepper - are facing hell from Congress and the United States Government, and the one constant in his infrequent communication with them (through burner cells, dingy telephone booths, as Sam slowly, at internet cafes and motel rooms with wall paper falling off, teaches him how to use his laptop computer) is to stay _away_.

Because technically, see, he’s wanted for Treason. And definitely for questioning, would be held up and dragged off if he ever did try to board a plane. (Sam calls it the “no-fly list”, tells him all the details about 9/11, (“There was a terrorist attack,” Hill had said, his first week at SHIELD, her eyes cold as ice, the kind of brittle that looks close to breaking, and he’d been too afraid to ask after,) details that make him _sick_ , as they cross from Houston to San Antonio). But he’s still Captain America, and, no matter how uncomfortable it makes him, that name carries weight. Means no one will come after him if he can just keep off the radar long enough - so he and Sam hit city after city, state after state, run lead after lead into the ground, find story after story of death and destruction caused by the Winter Soldier. (It’s almost enough for him to regret recognizing Bucky, making him _remember_ \- but it’s _Bucky_ , and, the rarely lucid Peggy aside, he’s all Steve has left, and Steve’s not willing to let him go.)

They’re in the middle of the Arizona desert, a diner in the middle of nothing else resembling civilization, when the first email he’s ever gotten pops into his inbox. (“Seriously,” Sam laments, as he punches the keys one by one on the keyboard with his index fingers, “Your password is July4America?” And Steve glares back, internally cursing Nick Fury - but if nothing else, it _is_ easy to remember.)

 

\---

 

Fury knows the address, so does Hill. He gives it to Natasha before he realizes both what it is and the safety measure it provides, though she never uses it.

 

\---

 

The email is from Hill, forwarded from an unremarkable Stark Industries address, which he suspects is untraceable. In the email is a single document, attached, in the body another email address, and two words in the subject line: sign this.

It’s a contract, law firm White & Case, no questions asked, no charges pressed regarding his involvement in the takedown of SHIELD, in exchange for 25 educational video tapes, nothing else. He turns the screen toward Sam, whose eyebrows go up, up, and up, until he’s done reading and finally turns to Steve: “Looks like Captain America’s still a hero,” he says, with a smile and a calmness that Steve still doesn’t understand. (No one gets it, see - he’s no hero, no role model, or he _shouldn’t_ be - just a kid from Brooklyn.)

He calls Natasha the next day, forwards it to the address she gives him, breaks the phone in half, burns the metal at the next campfire he and Sam make, picks up another at the next utility store they pass, and has a barely 15 second conversation. (“Any longer,” she warns him and Sam, on the fairly short drive to get HYDRA information from Sitwell, “they can trace it.”)

“It’s legit.”

“You’re _kidding_.”

“Just the 21st century version of a show monkey.” And he can picture her drawl, the roll of her eyes, her deadpan, “Come _on_ , Rogers, _think_ ,” although she’ll never say it over the phone - no names. (“You mean there’s still phone taps?” “Don’t sound so excited, Rogers.”)

But it makes sense, laid out. If not a soldier, if not a science experiment, why _wouldn’t_ the US government use him as their mouth piece?

“You’re still there?” They saw her on the television again, yesterday. Still being peppered and interrogated _politely_ by an institution that should know better, if only because she’s _chosen_ to let them do so - not that they seem to realize this.

He hears a humorless laugh echo down the phone line. “Of course.”

“Will it help?”

She doesn’t hesitate before her answer. “Yes.”

“Right.” 

And he’ll do it, of course. Not for his country - this is not _service_ , what he’ll be doing, brainwashing children, becoming the government’s puppet (again) - but for Fury, still in hiding, Hill, barely surviving the same political mine fields as Natasha, even with Stark Industries to protect her, Sam, who hasn’t complained once, although Steve can see the exhaustion and fatigue, the frustration of essentially finding nothing beginning to weigh on him, and Natasha, who knows he wouldn’t hesitate, who wouldn’t ask if she didn’t _need_ it.

She adds one last thing before ending the phone conversation, before each of them proceed to make quick disposal of their respective mobile devices, “Make them _work_ for it.”

 

\---

 

He sends the email to the address listed, with Hill copied on it after a quick discussion with Sam, two additions to the contract - immunity from the United States Government for Natalia Romanova, alias Natasha Romanoff, and an agreement for 24 educational videos, each no longer than 5 minutes, as decided by the government, a 25th with a script of his choosing.

 

\---

 

The next call he gets comes from Sam’s burner, passed over not a second after he answers --

“You’ve turned Stark into a fan.” The delivery is monotone, if slightly disapproving - Hill, then. (sometimes, he gets Pepper.)

“They’ll take it?”

“They want a preliminary outline of your project.”

“And?”

“Nothing else.” Which means they’ll grant Natasha her immunity, and his breath of relief travels down the phone line.

She must hear it, because her voice softens, a fraction, and she adds, “Not too bad.”  
It’s approval - rare, from her.

“For you --”

“The same. It should die down soon.” So he did the right thing, then. Not asking for her pardon as well as Natasha’s, which was a risky thing to start off with.

“Good luck.” _Thank you_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say - this is business of favors, he’s learned, of debts owed, not of apologies and gratitude. (And he almost died so Hill could sink the Insight ships, would have died if not for Bucky, and they both know it.)

“Check your email,” she ends, the call abruptly cutting out as she hangs up.

 

\---

 

“So,” Sam starts, casually reading the screen over Steve’s shoulder. It’s two days after the phone call from Hill, and they’re in Maryland, now. Potomac. Close enough to DC to pick up Natasha, far enough away to still make a clean break if necessary, “What are you gonna do for your video? No, wait let me guess… How to make a speech?” 

He snorts involuntarily at that suggestion, wonders if Sam will believe it if he tells him he hid outside the classroom everytime he had to present work for art class, shakes his head.

“No,” he says, face turning set, determined - maybe it’s not the best use of his fame, but it’s important, to him. And politically speaking, it _looks_ harmless.

“I think I’ll call it, ‘What to do when someone yells at you to _get off_ their lawn.’”

Sam’s raised eyebrows is the only reaction Steve gets, Sam’s only response: “Guess you’d better starting writing that script.”


End file.
